Tuesday, March 27, 2007

The central unanswered question is whether the president and attorney general were shaking up the prosecutor corps to make it better or to make it into a political weapon to help the Republican Party.

That was today's editorial from the Chicago Tribune, not a paper known for wacky, liberal views.

Andrew Sullivan picks up on that and runs with it, by looking at a recent report which shows the Bushies have really been busy remaking the Justice Department into a fiefdom of the President:

From 2001 through 2006 the Bush Justice Department investigated elected Democratic office holders and office seekers locally (non-state-wide and non federal offices) at a rate more than seven times greater (nearly 85 percent to 12 percent) than they investigated local Republican elected office holders and seekers. This was so even though, throughout the nation, Democrat elected officials outnumber Republican elected officials at the rate of only 50 percent to 41 percent. Nine percent of elected officials are Independent/Other.

Is this what we want? Agencies of the government being used to smash the opposition?